> but this was legitimately a step in the right direction I felt
I'll steelman against this, but only because I really enjoy entertaining the idea. Even back then, it was a branding farce. The San Bernadino event was in 2015, pretty close proximity to the Snowden leaks which disclosed Apple's 2012 cooperation with PRISM. Best-case scenario, it was an extremely lucky press junket; worst case scenario it was a false-flag operation designed to manufacture trust from the ground-up. In the aftermath, Apple cooperated with local police and federal authorities perfectly well, and the passcode to the shooter's phone did eventually come out. Apple continued providing device access in situations where warrants were issued. They even dropped their eventual charges against NSO Group.
If your tinfoil hat isn't tight enough yet, we're talking about events that happened over a decade after the Halloween documents. Apple's executives (and the three-letter spooks) know that Open Source can ship attestable and secure software that trounces their best paid UNIX or Windows Server subscription on the open market. If the goal is to expand surveillance and you've got a coalition of sycophantic tech executives (somehow, imagine that haha), then it would almost be trivial to program endless RCEs into the client-side with "secure" binary blobs. All the "E2EE" traffic can get copied onto tapes and sent to a warehouse in Langley. Would be like taking candy from a baby.
I'll steelman against this, but only because I really enjoy entertaining the idea. Even back then, it was a branding farce. The San Bernadino event was in 2015, pretty close proximity to the Snowden leaks which disclosed Apple's 2012 cooperation with PRISM. Best-case scenario, it was an extremely lucky press junket; worst case scenario it was a false-flag operation designed to manufacture trust from the ground-up. In the aftermath, Apple cooperated with local police and federal authorities perfectly well, and the passcode to the shooter's phone did eventually come out. Apple continued providing device access in situations where warrants were issued. They even dropped their eventual charges against NSO Group.
If your tinfoil hat isn't tight enough yet, we're talking about events that happened over a decade after the Halloween documents. Apple's executives (and the three-letter spooks) know that Open Source can ship attestable and secure software that trounces their best paid UNIX or Windows Server subscription on the open market. If the goal is to expand surveillance and you've got a coalition of sycophantic tech executives (somehow, imagine that haha), then it would almost be trivial to program endless RCEs into the client-side with "secure" binary blobs. All the "E2EE" traffic can get copied onto tapes and sent to a warehouse in Langley. Would be like taking candy from a baby.